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he last few weeks have been extremely hot and dry with high winds, culminating in the worst bushfires Australia has seen in recorded history on Saturday the 7th (now being called “Black Saturday”) where the temperature reached over 46º C and many fires broke out, involving vast swathes of the State and in some cases totally obliterating some townships. Nearly 2000 homes have been destroyed and over 180 people so far have lost their lives (the final numbers are not confirmed yet, but I suspect it will go higher) My family have been fortunate, despite living in area surrounded by many forests, national parks and wooded catchment areas and the like, danger has so far passed us by, but we remain on alert and have important paperwork, photos (and for me, cameras) packed and ready to go should we need to abandon our home in the face of a dangerous threat. Of course our children and our lives are the main priority, so we must be prepared to lose those material things, if need be. So far the weather has settled and we are just waiting for some rain, but early last night as we were preparing to get the kids to bed and relax when we received a few phonecalls in quick succession from concerned friends and relatives, as a fire had broken out just ‘down the hill’ from us. Thankfully it was contained with alacrity by our brave Country Fire Authority volunteers and other emergency service workers who have been tireless in their dedication to protect the community.
I suppose this leads me to ponder on the transience of ‘things’ and the importance of photography in our personal lives and the construction of our reality through our memories. Often the first material things people try to preserve in the face of disasters like fire are their photo albums. I know that looking through my photographs of my wife and children brings me great joy and sparks recollection of happy times that often get buried below the surface of consciousness by the ongoing events and concern of everyday life.

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n a lighter note, the French publisher Editions Allia has kindly sent me 5 complimentary copies of the booklet of Andalusian Poetry featuring my Polaroid abstract on the cover. This is my first Book Cover!!

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ic Nichols of Four Corners Dark has an interesting interview with hideki ohmori of powershovel you know Powershovel, the cool people behind the blackbird,fly camera – this is part one, so I am looking forward to reading the next installment – update: pert two is here: interview with hideki ohmori of powershovel part two. Thanks Nic! Speaking of the BBF, the latest issue of Lightleaks magazine (Issue 22) has a review of this fine camera by C. Gary Moyer (as well as many other tasty lo-fidelity photographic content)

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esterday (November 12th) my pinhole rose photo was published in the extratech section of the Herald Sun newspaper in Melbourne. It’s good to see that in these days of megapixel digital photography the origins of photography and image making (the Camera Obscura) still get some mention (even if it is under the title ‘strange but true‘ *lol*) The article was printed in B & W unfortunately, as the whole layout and accompanying images looked great in colour, hats of to the editor Richard and graphic artist involved – My thanks to Richard Conrad (the technical editor of the paper) for providing the colour pdf of the article for my reference – note that my image and accompanying review of World Pinhole Photography Day is just a small section of the whole article which encompassed a broad spectrum of photography related subjects.

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n Tokyo there lives a very generous man named Susuma Kohda, who also happens to be a very talented photographer. This morning an Australia Post vehicle delivered a package to my door. Inside were two magazines kindly sent to me by Susumu, one was the latest edition of Snap! where more of my images (along with those from other talented photographers) were again used to illustrate what the blackbird,fly camera is capable of. Both of my children were represented which thankfully prevented any sibling rivalry, naturally they were excited to see themselves in print again! The other magazine was called 34 ThirtyFour Magazine and had some truly fantastic examples of Susumu’s portraiture work using a Diana + camera.
Thanks very much Susumu!
I would also like to thank Skorj, another great guy who lives in Tokyo, who sent me a copy of the first Snap! magazine my photos appeared in at about the same time Susumu did, so I ended up with two copies of that one!

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flickr friend of mine and fellow toy camera fan who lives in Japan – Susumu Kohda (Tokiocityphotos on flickr), noticed some of my photos in a Japanese magazine called Snap! and sent me 3 images from it today. I was excited to see photographs of my dog, daughter (and friends), chicken, trees near our house and a couple of long exposure images of Melbourne at night in the magazine, which were taken with a prototype version of the BBF or ‘Blackbird Fly’ from Superheadz. Funnily enough I haven’t seen the shots until now as I sent the exposed rolls along with the camera straight back to Tokyo after 5 days of shooting! (The guys at Superheadz will be sending me them eventually, I know from past experience with the Holga 135BC, they’re great to work with) but it was sweet to see that at least some turned out OK considering I hadn’t used the camera before and didn’t even have a user manual! (not to mention that the 5 days I had the camera were the darkest, most overcast, rainy days Melbourne had seen all year!) Superheadz must have developed them and used a few of my shots as examples for the article, which looks to be a review of the new 35mm plastic BBF, a toycamera TLR that I’ve talked about previously here, and made a video reviewed of here is very cool and looks like they might be near to releasing it, which is even cooler. I’m unfamiliar with the magazine Snap but did find a link to the Japanese site of Snap!.